Legal Clarity Quotes

Article 50 is very poorly written and raises more questions more answers.

A Supreme Court ruling is supposed to provide clarity to contentious legal issues, but in the case of reproductive rights, it was just the beginning of a long, heated, and grueling debate.

Believing in and practising the principles of the rule of law is, with our liberty and democracy, among the most powerful weapons we have. It is less effective if we blur its clarity and we should do this as sparingly as possible.

Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion.

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

Congress has an obligation to clear the legal fog by passing my bill to require the federal government to obtain a warrant if it wants to conduct aerial surveillance.

It goes without saying that a law to be valid must be clear enough to make its commands understandable.

I wanted the Irish Constitution to be as explicit as it possibly could be, with as few fictions as possible.

Laws must be clear, precise, and uniform for all citizens.

Immigration law's already settled. That's why we have people known as illegal immigrants, because the law is very clear. They're not being called illegal immigrants because people are biased and prejudiced.

When the laws lack clarity to the point where police officers who apply them have diverging opinions on their interpretation, can we reasonably expect that ordinary citizens can figure them out?

It would then be most admirably adapted to the purposes of justice, if laws properly enacted were, as far as circumstances admitted, of themselves to mark out all cases, and to abandon as few as possible to the discretion of the judge.

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

Good legislation should bring clarity and not confusion.

It is best that laws should be so constructed as to leave as little as possible to the decision of those who judge.

The law rarely hesitates in declaring its own meaning; but the Judges are frequently puzzled to find out the meaning of others.

The Supreme Court, when it decides a new legal question, does not make illegal what was previously legal; it gives a final authoritative determination of whether an action was legal when it took place.

The best reason to be assigned, in this case, for not having made the Constitution more free from a charge of uncertainty in its meaning, is believed to be, that it was not suspected that any such charge would ever take place; and it appears that no such charge did take place, during the early period of the Constitution, when the meaning of its authors could be best ascertained, nor until many of the contemporary lights had in the lapse of time been extinguished. How often does it happen, that a notoriety of intention diminishes the caution against its being misunderstood or doubted!

I really did try to write it so that an educated public that cares about issues like this doesn't have to be a lawyer and can read it and understand it.

Laws should not be subtle. They are designed for people of average understanding.

Rules of property ought to be generally known, and not to be left upon loose notes, which rather serve to confound principles, than to confirm them.

Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?

I think whether you are a judge on my court or whether you are a judge on a court of appeals or any court, and lawyers too - and if you're interested in law yourself, you'll be in the same situation - you have a text that isn't clear. If the text is clear, you follow the text. If the text isn't clear, you have to work out what it means. And that requires context.

The framers of the constitution employed words in their natural sense; and, where they are plain and clear, resort to collateral aids to interpretation is unnecessary, and cannot be indulged in to narrow or enlarge the text; but where there is ambiguity or doubt, or where two views may well be entertained, contemporaneous and subsequent practical construction is entitled to the greatest weight.

Were this not Texas, were there not a state where there were no protections at all and where the law was clear on that, I think CBS and Mary Mapes and Dan Rather and all of us had a very good chance of winning. So this is an ongoing battle about an issue of principle.